I turned
to Ristan, numb with shock. “Tell Ryder that if he killed Adrian, to never think about me again, to never fucking try and contact me again. I will not be owned, and I will not be Transitioning. Transition can take me to bloody fucking hell right along with it for all I care. Tell him I am no longer his.”
Ristan pushed closer and grabbed my arms and shook me a little.
“Flower, snap the hell out of it now, before you light up the entire city again.” He got right up in my face, and those patterned eyes swirled at me dangerously. “You’ve got to stop trying to think he is ever going to behave like a human, Syn. He’s not. He is a Fae warrior, and we come from one of the most dangerous places that you couldn’t even imagine in your worst dreams. What you saw in Faery was just a glimpse of what we consider relatively safe. He.
Is
. Fae. That means he is a fucking predator that is used to taking what he wants, and he
will
protect and defend what belongs to him by
any
means necessary. And, before you go on and on about how no one owns you, trust me, he does. You just haven’t gotten it through your head yet, but your heart knows it’s true.” I tried to turn away, and he wouldn’t let me. He just kept after me until I had no choice but to look in his eyes again. He softened a bit when I did.
“
Flower, I know this a big change for you. You will Transition, and you don’t have a choice in the matter. You have got to learn our world and ways, and you don’t have much time in which to do it. Ryder may wear the mask of a human, but he has only been in this world for a little over fifteen years. That is a blink of an eye to us. He is still trying to adapt and understand this world, and sometimes it gets messy. Now, I am sure nothing permanent happened to your boy-toy this time. Come on, and I’ll give you a quick sift home.”
I nodded and placed my hand in Ristan’s.
I was losing control. I’d kissed Adrian, and it hadn’t been him who I’d wanted to kiss—that damn growl had made my mind go blank, and I’d kissed the wrong male. I'd also failed to take out the target and, what's worse—I was teetering on the brink of Transition, and I could feel it starting to take over.
When I got home
, I could feel the power draining, but it had taken its toll on my body. It had been dark magic, and there had been no light to counter it. I'd been light based, with dark magic as a backup. Dark magic was dangerous, and you had to be careful of using it at all. I’d just done a huge power overload, and now I felt it with every move I made.
The dog was waiting at the door when I arrived
, and he growled at me. Great, even my dog hated me. “Mister Fancy Pants, go lay down!” I shouted, frustrated with everything, and scared for Adrian.
The door I'd just slammed closed
, flew open. “Get the fuck out here, Syn,” Ryder growled.
“
Where's Adrian?” I cried, not knowing if I wanted the answer.
“
Afraid I killed your boyfriend?” he asked coldly, his eyes turning hard.
Mister Fancy Pants snarled
, but stayed beside me. I swallowed and shook my head. “Leave me alone,” I shouted back.
“
You belong to me, you
kissed
him. You breached the fucking contract, Synthia,” he replied scathingly as he crossed his arms over his t-shirt clad chest.
“
I kissed him so you
killed
him? I couldn’t stop it, dammit, I couldn’t control it. Something inside of me needed to kiss him, not
me
. And it wasn’t even him this thing inside of me wanted! It was whatever the fuck was growling! So, yes, I kissed him, Ryder, because I seem to have a monster inside of me! And you killed him! So, fuck you, fuck him, and fuck me! Fuck everything!” I was swinging at the air with tears streaking down my face.
“
You're close to Transitioning,” he replied carefully, his face still concealed in the shadows of the porch.
“
No! I'm
not
doing it.
Period.
No fucking way. I control what happens in my life! I want to know what you did to Adrian!” I hated the fact that when I got pissed, I cried. Most of the time I didn’t make sense when it was this bad. It was such a girlie thing to do, and it screamed weakness.
“
He's alive, Syn, bruised—but alive. He won’t be if he touches you again. No one touches what is mine, and lives. Make no fucking mistake, Pet, you
are
mine.”
“
I am not
your
anything. You marked me without my permission. So I'm not yours until
I
decide to give myself to you. You can't just piss on my leg and say I'm yours. It doesn't work that way in the real world.”
“
I didn’t piss on your leg, Syn. I fucked you. I claimed you. Regardless of what you say now, you gave yourself to me, and I’m pretty sure you would have agreed to anything I had asked while I was inside your pretty pink folds.”
“
Bullshit! I am not yours. I'm not something that can be owned, Ryder! I am not a fucking pet that you can just chain to your fucking wall and play with when you want to! I'm a human being!”
“
There's where you’re wrong. You're not human, you're Fae, and you're changing already. Fast. You broke the contract by kissing Adrian. I could kill you right now, and no one would be able to stop me. Just remember, I have Adam. Be at my club tomorrow night, or I will give Adam over to the women to feed, from
him
.”
“
You can't do that!” I shouted.
“
I can, and I will.” He sifted, before I could argue with him.
He left me standing at the door fuming. He was the most infuriating male on the fucking planet. Hot one minute and
then as cold as the fucking iceberg that dropped the Titanic! I turned and slammed the door, pretending it was his face instead of empty space.
I showered
, and changed before calling Alden on the phone number he had called me from, and reported that the target had been taken out by Vlad. “Alden, I recharged…” I said trailing off.
“
And?” he asked cautiously.
“
Dark magic, only.”
“
That's not good.” He sounded worried.
“
How bad we talking, Alden?”
“
Pretty bad. If you have no light magic the dark will consume you. Did you use it?”
“
I kinda went nuclear. Adrian calmed me down though. He balanced it out before I could get hurt.”
And then he got his ass beat by Ryder
…because of me.
“
Adrian isn't connected,
is
he?” he asked quietly.
“
Yeah, well with everything that went down, I kinda forgot to tell you that he was. He used the Coven bond to link to Adam and pulled power from me. He got too close, and I used mine against him to tap my line and pull from it. We're connected the same as we were before. His felt deadly though, stronger somehow, as if it had been building up without an outlet.”
“
That's not good,” he said again.
“
Alden, I really need good news right now. I'm not sure I can take much more bad news.”
“
You have magic,” he replied chuckling.
“
Dark magic, without light…I basically have bad magic that can kill me. Yay me. Any word on the ward’s inside my house?”
“
I have my best people working on it. So far, we only have a few words figured out. I can tell you it protects against the Horde, but not sure if it pertains to a certain caste of Horde, or more. Shawn says it could also protect against a couple of other castes of Fae, like Dark and Light. So we ended up with more questions and only a few hints, so far.”
“
Great, can you make them hurry up?”
“
Listen, Syn. Try not to use any magic unless you have to. I'll dig through the archives and see what I can find on how to harness it. Good job tonight. I know you didn’t make the kill, but we'd still be chasing our asses looking for him had you not gone in. I’ll have Shawn work through these wards and see what he can come up with. Syn, what Shawn is doing—is for me, and off the record—the Guild doesn’t know, so don’t contact him directly. There is a lot going on at the Guild right now.” He hesitated. “Stay away from the Guild for the time being. As soon as I can, I’ll tell you what I think is going on.”
“
I need some sleep. Maybe it won't be so bad with coffee in me.” Yeah, I could actually sleep after a cup of coffee. I could do anything after coffee.
We hung up
, and I stretched, before heading in to get some liquid happiness.
I walked into the kitchen and
fired up the coffee maker. Feeling a bit peckish, I opened the fridge. It was empty, and it hadn't been when I’d left the house. I closed it and scratched my head thinking it was strange, but the wards I'd cast were still up and working when I'd come in. The dog’s food bowl was still full, along with the water. I shook my head and went to the living room, grabbing up the remote and flipping on the TV, while sinking blissfully into the couch. Mister Fancy Pants sat at my feet wagging his tail happily. He looked bigger now and more alive now than he had when I'd brought him home.
He turned his head and leveled me with clear blue ey
es. I patted his head and his eyes closed, like he really liked head pats and scratches and wanted more. I felt something ripple inside the room, and instantly went on guard. My heart raced as the thought of the Fae who had killed my parents flashed inside my mind. I reached into the cushion, pulling out one of the handguns. This wasn’t happening.
I felt someone sift in behind me. I turned and took aim
, but Ristan was faster. He disarmed me and swore. “Flower, what the hell are you doing with a gun? Ryder felt your panic.”
I growled
, but ignored him as I disarmed him and took my gun back. “Something isn't right. Can’t you feel that?”
Ristan turned his strange silver
and black swirling eyes to the walls that had started to glow red with warning. The wards were reacting to something, and they only did that when something bad was inside the house, or close to it. “I don't feel anything. Your wards on the other hand…” He smiled and lit up his brands.
“
Something is coming,” I warned. “Mister Fancy—
fuck
!” I shouted as I watched my dog shift.
Into a person.
“
Nooooo! You turn back into a fucking dog this minute!” I shouted, stomping my feet as Ristan barked with laughter until he doubled over from it.
“
Only you could go to the pound and pick out a Shifter, Syn.”
My dog was a Shape-shifter. A twenty something boy sat where my dog had just been
, with lanky red hair and bright blue eyes. He was screaming with pain as he changed to his human form and the wards were showing him no mercy. Alden had just told me that the wards were to keep out certain castes of the Fae, most likely Horde…were the Shifters from Faery too, and part of the Horde? Was Ryder Unseelie—the Horde? My mind shifted back to what I had glimpsed in his eyes a little over a week ago at the ball—like an animal was lurking there…his face shifting subtly, and the glimpse of fangs I know I had seen. The rumors about the Dark Prince were pretty consistent about him being one of the most powerful Fae out there.
Ristan watched as I put
it together and shook his head. “I wouldn’t let your mind wander in that direction, Synthia. Nothing good ever comes from making assumptions.”
“
Is Ryder the Horde King? The timing is about right. The rumors started about twenty years ago, and Ryder has been here for about fifteen of those years. He can't enter my house, his comments…” I stopped as Ristan turned to face me with cold merciless death in his beautiful eyes.
“
Sorry, Syn, you're wrong.”
“
No, Ristan, let her assume,” Ryder said from the doorway where he stood at the threshold. “The boy needs to get out of the house.”
We all looked down to where Mister Fancy Pants was writhing silently in pain. Ristan ea
sily picked the now red-headed boy up and took him outside where it looked like he had immediate relief. I watched Ryder where he stood outside my door.
“
You’re the Horde King,” I whispered.
“
Is that what you think, Syn? That I'm the mythical Horde King?” He tilted his head and smiled coldly. Unfriendly.
“
The wards…shifters must be part of the Horde, and the timing—it's too right,” I smiled, thinking how I'd just hit the nail on the head.
“
And you think the wards only work on the Horde?” he asked carefully.
“
I think you're the Horde King, Ryder, and that you're after something.”
I l
ooked down to where his feet were on the other side of the threshold. He couldn't come inside the house. He’d had to pull me outside yesterday since he hadn't been able to come in, and the wards had landed him flat on his ass once already. “Alden said the wards protected, and that my parents had been hiding me from evil.”
“
Ah, so naturally you think I'm evil.”
“
I’m not quite sure what to think yet, Ryder.”
He stepped over the threshold and strode inside
until he stood inches in front of me. “I already have you, Syn, and as you can see, the wards are not reacting to me. Still think I'm him?”
I eyed the
wards and looked back to Ryder. No strain showed on his face. Ristan stood with the naked shifter on my porch as Ryder's men stood on my dead lawn, watching the standoff. “But last time…?” I asked, looking up to meet his eyes.
“
Last time the wards must have reacted, because a Fae was inside the house. They hadn't been active for a while. Perhaps they reacted to the fact that a Transitioned Fae was inside their protection. Who knows why they reacted to me. Inactive wards are unstable at best. They had been left unattended and un-strengthened for a very long time. You’re smart enough to figure that out.”
I hated when he was ri
ght and had to state the obvious. Especially after I’d just accused him of being the Horde King, based on theory alone…
I crossed my arms over my chest as my body reacted to how close he was.
“And him?” I leveled a glare at Mister
Not
So Fancy Pants. I also thought of the Fae who had abused and killed my parents. They had been Transitioned, which killed his explanation on the spot.
Ryder's lips lifted as he turned and took in the naked Shifter.
“Only you, Syn, only you could find a Shifter inside an animal shelter, and bring it home.”
Ristan s
norted from the doorway, and asked the Shifter where he now stood on the porch, a safe distance from the wards. “Explain how you ended up in the pound, Fido.”